Regarding Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game and the mess that followed

For me Fallout is one of the single most poignant works of popular culture that I have encountered. The original Fallout hit all the right points to make it appeal to me in every way, from the blasted out retro-futurism to the somber yet hopeful tone the game struck - I was hooked. My feelings about Fallout and the impact that it had on me are pretty well known, so I'm not going to spend a lot of time gushing about how much I loved it; no, I've come not to praise Fallout but to bury it. But, before we get to why the series has been run into the ground, let's have a quick look at it starting at the beginning.

Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game was a relatively small cRPG, especially when compared to the legacy it'd launch. The game takes place in California and introduces the player to the staple of the series, the sprawling bomb shelters known as 'vaults.' Immediately after introducing Vault 13 the player is promptly kicked out of it and into the harsh desert wasteland a la Mad Max wearing nothing but their futuristic bright blue spandex suit.  The player is tasked with finding a controller chip for the vault's water purification system, without it the vault will run out of clean water and everyone will die.  Along the way the Vault Dweller encounters the Super Mutant army led by The Master as well as the Brotherhood of Steel, two groups that would become staples of the Fallout series moving forward. The Brotherhood of Steel is presented here as a xenophobic group of technology worshipers clad in power armor, yet unable to produce replacement suits due to insufficient materials and tools, thus leading them to meticulously care for the armor and their high-tech weapons. The Brotherhood can be persuaded to assist the player with a small force of paladins (four total across two scenarios) but otherwise they want no part in the greater world. The Super Mutants are the primary threat faced by the player, created by The Master as a new race that can thrive in the wasteland.  One of the options available to the player is to discover that Mutants are sterile and cannot reproduce, a fact that will lead The Master to suicide upon realizing the futility of his work.  In the end the Vault Dweller wins the day but is refused entry back into his home, because the Overseer fears his exploits will drive others to attempt to leave the safety of Vault 13.

Fallout 2 picks up roughly a generation after Fallout ended and also takes place in and around California. The player now takes on the role of a tribal hero known as the Chosen One, who is descended (rather recently, one would guess) from the Vault Dweller, the founder of the tribe. The tribe is dying due to poor farming conditions and the Chosen One is sent out to find the G.E.C.K. (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) in hopes that this technological marvel will save the doomed tribe. Along the way the player encounters a growing nation state, the New California Republic (NCR) which has sprung up from a settlement that the Vault Dweller helped in the first game.  The Brotherhood of Steel is withering away and even more reclusive, only showing up in a few small bunkers that monitor the towns and offering only token material support to the player.  The Super Mutant army is now reduced to roving war-bands who attack travelers at random and a few friendlies who have settled a mining town. The main enemy this go around is the Enclave, a military group clad in new Advanced Power Armor who are secreted away on an oil rig that was the bomb shelter for the President of the United States. The Enclave believe that they are the ruling government of the wasteland and seek to eradicate all mutant life from the country, which means everyone who isn't in a vault, and their evil plan requires a G.E.C.K. to accomplish. In the end, the Chosen One blows up the oil rig killing the President and the Enclave and saving their village.

Fallout Tactics is the moment shit got weird for Fallout. The diminishing Brotherhood of Steel now sends airships full of paladins west for reasons and then the ships crash leaving them stranded. They develop a new type of power armor and start recruiting so that they can become the police of the mid-western wasteland.  The Brotherhood run up against a self-aware A.I. that has an army of robots bent on destroying human life and ruling the wastes. Or something.

Fallout 3 was the first Fallout game developed by Bethesda Softworks and it is widely and wrongly regarded as the best game in the series.

Fallout 3 takes place in and around the D.C. area. The player takes on the role of a vault dweller who leaves the vault in nothing but their now baggy dark blue vault suit to chase down their run-away father. The father is out in the wastelands trying to provide clean water so that everyone doesn't die (how those people survived the previous 200 years since the war is unclear) which requires a G.E.C.K.  The Brotherhood of Steel has sent a sizable force from California to D.C. on foot, for reasons and they now act as the guardians of the D.C. area.  The Enclave is alive and well and also happen to be in the D.C. area, which actually makes more sense than California if only it didn't contradict the establish story.  The Enclave is led by a self-aware A.I. and they again want to wipe out all mutated life in the wasteland. Super Mutants are present, though they have nothing to do with the Master, thankfully.  Ultimately the Brotherhood of Steel launches a full scale assault on the Enclave to protect the water purification center and there is a giant robot that throws nuclear bombs like footballs.  So basically it's just a rehash of the high points from the first two games with a bit of Tactics thrown in for good measure (especially visually).

Also, that shit with Harold was completely stupid.

Fallout: New Vegas is the high water mark for the Fallout series. Developed by Obsidian Entertainment with J.E. Sawyer, who had previously worked on the unreleased Van Buren* and other Fallout projects, as the project lead

Picking up some years after the end of Fallout 2, the game explores the issues faced by the sprawling and dominant NCR as it struggles to expand and provide a quality of life to all of its citizens.  Facing up against it is Caesar's Legion, a tribal group who have reshaped themselves in the image of Imperial Rome.  Both factions offer a different type of peace and prosperity and caught in the middle is New Vegas itself, an independent and relatively unscathed town in the Mojave wasteland that both groups want to bring under their control due to the intact and functional Hoover Dam power plants.  The player takes on the role of a courier who was left for dead for unknown reasons.  Returning are the Brotherhood of Steel who have a tiny isolated garrison near to Vegas and are licking their wounds from a nasty defeat by the overwhelming force of the NCR.  Super Mutants have a peaceful town in the mountains that is refuge for their kind to live out their days in peace and comfort.  There are a few (like 6) former Enclave soldiers that can be discovered if the player follows a very specific plot thread and series of interactions.  The game culminates in a Second Battle for Hoover Dam where the player, depending on the choices they've made throughout the game, can have New Vegas join the NCR, the Legion, or remain its own independent nation-state.

New Vegas advanced the series and the original story in a way that felt organic. It definitely benefited from having Chris Avellone and Josh Sawyer on the team either of whom would be ringers on their own.  Tim Cain, one of the creators of Fallout, was asked about a Fallout sequel once and responded with "My idea is explore more of the world and more of the ethics of a post-nuclear world, not to make a better plasma gun" and ultimately New Vegas is the exemplar of that philosophy making it the true Fallout 3.

In the Future There Will Be Fallout

There is a new Fallout game on the horizon, again being developed internally by Bethesda Softworks. It'll be interesting to see how BethSoft handles a new Fallout game, considering that their previous game, Fallout 3, was a simple recycling of previous story points and factions.

One of the few things Fallout 3 got right was the intro song, which have always been iconic to the series. With the first Fallout, the development team wanted to use I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire by The Ink Spots but could not secure the rights, leading them to securing Maybe by that same group.  Bethesda's Fallout 3 opens with I Don't Want to Set the World On Fire, which is a nice call back to the desires of the original creators but also betrays a lack of vision by the current development team.

Bethesda's game holds a special place in the history of series, being embraced with near universal praise. I believe that the appeal comes from it's safe and bland nature that pushed no boundaries and presented little if any new ideas, while simultaneously shaving the edges off of the riskier parts of the Fallout series (such as the goofy but iconic spandex jumpsuits). While the game was visually safe and unassuming, it was also relentlessly silly taking the series long establish trend of goofy Easter eggs and turning it up to 11, making them central to the story and overwhelmingly dumb (Antagonizer or the vampire teen run-aways, anyone?).

Overall Bethesda presented a game that has but a few original ideas and of those most feel out of place or wrong for the series as it was previously established. When it does get something right, it's a recycled song or entire plot thread.  So what will they do now that they are completely on their own?  They have a story on the opposite side of the country from the original with endless opportunities to craft something in that world that is both exciting and unique.  But do they have the team for it?  Exciting and unique don't really seem to be words that typify any Bethesda game, Fallout or otherwise - derivative and watered down, perhaps.

Regardless, whatever comes next will likely be meet with yet more universal praise.  Game criticism is one of the least discerning groups of critics out there who have a well established pattern of praising AAA games regardless of quality only to contradict themselves a year later in a 'look back' article.

Last Minute Addendum!

I took long enough writing this that the new trailer came out, so for a bit of last minute commentary I'll add my thoughts on it. The trailer opens with a call back to the original opening of Fallout 1, which is nice but does nothing to calm fears of yet another retread.

There are a lot of flashes to pre-war America while showing a ruined house that's in damn good shape for being left for 200 years. Vertibirds are back yet again and being presented as pre-war tech.  The mismatched and bulky armors are nice, though too much focus on power armor tech can weigh Fallout down, as it is a story about people more than gear. The airships draw me back to Tactics and you never want to evoke that game if you can help it.  There are a lot of fun looking settlements and neon lit signs that look like they'll be nice to look at. I noticed a few more call backs that don't soothe fears that BethSoft has an originality issue, but it'll be hard to say until the game is out.

My closing thoughts are that I will now happily eat crow over the Vault suit, which is once again bright blue and skin tight; I really didn't think BethSoft had the guts to pull that out but it's a pleasant surprise. Overall the game looks bright and colorful, in keeping with the Fallout aesthetic and is pretty much the opposite of what Fallout 3 was.

*Several plots and characters from Van Buren find their way into New Vegas.

On Bowe Bergdahl

It takes something fairly significant for me to feel ire for veterans, especially people I know personally and those that I served with.  The outrage over the United States cutting a deal to free a soldier who had been in Taliban custody for five years is exactly the kind of situation to set me off.  I realize that this story is over a week old, which means it was last fucking century to the online community, but it stuck with me so I'm discussing it.

For the person who has no idea what I'm talking about, let me recap as briefly as possible.  Five years ago an American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, wandered off in Afghanistan and was taken prisoner by the Taliban.  A deal was struck with the Taliban to swap Bergdahl for five prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility.  The Taliban threatened to kill Bergdahl if details of the swap were leaked before the swap occurred.  President Obama ordered the deal done, bypassing Congress (who he was under obligation to inform of any transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners), and Bergdahl was brought home.

Most of us either didn't know Bergdahl was a prisoner or we'd long forgotten about him.

Now normally this would be the end of the story, but President Obama is deeply hated by some Americans and so the show must go on.  The outrage that followed this swap was amazing and often misguided, uninformed, and downright insipid.  Claims were made that Bergdahl left to willingly surrender to the Taliban, that the President had broken the law (again) to free him, that this would embolden the enemy to capture more American citizens in order to effect the release of more Guantanamo Bay prisoners, and that the United States was now negotiating with terrorists.  I have a hard time knowing where to begin.

The President is a tough guy to like, generally speaking. He campaigned on a bunch of promises that he didn't deliver on, he's a Democrat, he might be a Muslim from Kenya and not even an American Citizen, also he is definitely black.  White people, I know how hard it is to articulate why you don't like the President when that reason is "he's black."  You are smart and you know that it is not cool to say such a thing in our modern society, so you have to come up with other reasons (see the Kenyan Muslim thing) or just say "well, I just don't like him."*  Since the race thing is a conversational third rail, we have to avoid it and that leads us to start creating issues where none exist (Kenyan Muslim) and blowing other shit way the fuck out of proportion (Benghazi).  If President Obama scores a victory it has to be attacked, even if it's for the good of the people (debt ceiling, government shutdown, rescuing a POW).  Also, president Obama is dealing with a congress made up not of politicians working for the good of the people, but obstructionists working for the impairment of him and nothing more (except for the big money lobbies, but everyone works for them, even the President).  Generally speaking, freeing a POW of five years is cause for relief, but this time it's cause for outrage.

It's hard for me to imagine a group of people as worthless as our current legislative branch.  At every turn they surprise me by exceeding their own level of uselessness.  They have blocked or attempted to block any law that the President has voiced support for, they have forced the government into a shutdown that benefited no one, they block any of the Presidents nominees for any office no matter how insignificant, and then they hold hearing after hearing, give countless press conferences, and spend millions of our tax dollars attempting to fabricate controversies and scandals where none exist.  For the most part they are successful in swaying the minds of people who don't care to read the news from more than one source (or at all).  Which is why a freed POW is seen (to the Reds) as a bad thing.

Now pretend that this congress had been informed prior to the deal, as they say they should have been, and the thirty days had been waited out.  Is it really so hard to believe that the same grandstanding obstructionists who shut down the government on a lark might, maybe, have leaked the deal in order to block it?  Is it that far fetched to believe that the same person wouldn't appear on Fox News with a grin on their face while talking about how they heroically stopped the President from freeing his fellow Muslim terrorist and shucks we hate it that Bergdahl got shot, but he was probably a traitor anyway and plus the outcome justifies the deed?  I think, given our reality, that this is a likely scenario.  This congress has a mission statement to stop the President from doing anything to the point that the entire tea party platform could be summed up with "fuck that guy."  Given these facts, I'd say the President was spot on to bypass the legislative branch, in fact he should probably do that as often as possible.

Now all of this is just part and parcel for politics and not something that's surprising (though it is frustrating), what bugs me is the veterans who have latched on to the "he's a traitor" mantra along with the "we don't negotiate with terrorists" drivel.  To the "he's a traitor" people I say "So?"  Would you have left him there because of this?  Maybe he is a deserter and maybe he is a traitor, but he's our deserter and our traitor and we will deal with him our way.  The United States does not leave a man behind, that's drilled into us from day one and it goes for everyone, even the guys we don't like very much.  He'll be looked at, spoken to, debriefed, investigated, double checked, and debriefed again.  If Bergdahl is guilty of anything, he'll be dealt with and if need be he'll spend his days in a cell next to Bradley Manning, but it's our justice to mete out, not theirs. We leave no man behind, end of story.

As for the negotiating with terrorists thing, well it's simply not true.  The Taliban have not been labeled as a terrorist group partly because we cannot achieve a peace in Afghanistan without them at the table and partly for deals such as this. Whether we like it or not, they are a political group and not a terrorist group.  The distinction is only a label, but it is not our label to give, we have people for that and they made their call.

The last point that has really stuck with people is the fact that we traded five Guantanamo Bay prisoners for Bergdahl. This is a two point sticker that's gotten people worked up with dumbass conclusions.  The first is that the five guys will now return to the head offices of the Taliban, call up Al Quaeda and take command again, killing scores of people.  The people who believe this theory also believe the Taliban and Al Quaeda to be the most loyal and trusting groups in the world, the kinds of guys who welcome back men who have been imprisoned for years and trust that they stayed loyal the entire time.  So the opposite of us, I guess.  Of course these groups are actually very paranoid and not at all trusting, just like us, and these newly released guys aren't going back to the game, they are going to the bench at best.  It's not something the Pentagon is worried about.

That just leaves the "more Americans will be captured to free Guantanamo Bay prisoners" claim.  This one is simple, if we are worried that our indefinite imprisonment of these people is a risk to US citizens then maybe we need to bring cases against them or let them go.  It really is that simple.  The true fear behind that claim is the fear that Guantanamo Bay policy is endangering our citizens, not that making deals endangers our citizens (hell, that at least showed that sometimes we might act rationally), so obviously the policy needs to change.  I think we'd all be better for it.

If this deal had occurred under President Bush, we wouldn't be having this conversation, but here we are. No one wants to hear any of this, no one wants to admit the dark little parts of their brains that are driving this bit of nastiness, but it's all there and it's bigger than we've given it credit for.  For me though, it's as simple as I was taught as a Screaming Eagle and a Rakkasan - we don't leave people behind, any of them, and my fellow veterans should know better than to espouse otherwise.



* - This is the best answer one of my southern white Republican coworkers can give me on the subject, bless her heart.

Tony Scott

True Romance is one of my all time favorite films, written by Quentin Tarantino and elevated by Tony Scott's direction and Hans Zimmer's iconic score.  True Romance gave a generation of socially awkward film buffs a dream girl - Alabama Worley.  The film holds so many great moments, Gary Oldman as a thuggish drug dealer, Bronson Pinchot with a face full of coke, Christopher Walken's mobster, Brad Pitt stoned on a couch with a bong made from a honey bear, a Val Kilmer role we never see, and more quotable lines than you can shake two sticks at and those are just the cliff notes on this film's greatness.  It is a great time at the movies, made by people who all have an obvious love for movies.  Hell, the lead couple played by Christian Slater and Patrica Arquette meet in a theater during a Sonny Chiba double feature.  I love True Romance and if I ever had the chance to meet anyone involved with it, I'd thank them for the film.

But True Romance is merely my favorite film by Tony Scott, not necessarily his best or most important.  His best would arguably be Man on Fire but his most important would be Top Gun.  Badass Digest wrote a short article, based on a much longer GQ article, that talks, in part, about the impact that Top Gun has had on film and it is massive.  I don't know anyone who doesn't or didn't love Top Gun.  It was THE movie of a generation and one that made many a young man want to go fly planes and shoot down fighter planes from an undefined nation.  It was Tony Scott how made that happen and good or bad, it is a film that will ring through the ages.  

Tony Scott was always regarded as the lesser of the two Scott brothers, but he made his presence felt in his own way and without aping his brother.  Some of his films, like True Romance and The Hunger, are cult films with very devoted followings.  Others were mainstream hits that touched millions of people with their smart and slick approach to our world.  Crimson Tide, Man on Fire, and Days of Thunder are all films that show Tony Scott's style and vision clearly while topping many lists of modern classics.  Tony's death is a tragedy and without a doubt the film going community will miss him in the years to come.

To Tony Scott I say, you're so cool and you will be missed. 

Bellflower - Love Lost Burns

I'm fully aware of how often I praise Bellflower, I thought I'd go ahead and write a bit about the film and what it means to me and maybe next time I'm talking about it I can just link on back to this.  The synopsis of the film really does a disservice to it's depth and the true meat of the story, but none-the-less it's what initially drew me in - two friends who are obsessed with a Mad Max like vision of the apocalypse spend their free time building a flamethrower and a muscle car so that they'll be ready for civilization to collapse, until one of them meets a girl.  Talk about underselling a film.

Be aware that from this point on I'm going to talk about the movie as if you've seen it, so I may spoil the shit out of it if you aren't careful or you'll be hopelessly confused, but I can't talk about the film without speaking on it as a whole, so that's your warning.

What struck me the most about Bellflower was how blunt and honest it was about the emotional roller coaster faced by young men dealing with new, possibly first love and the impact that the demise of that relationship has.  The way that Woodrow reacts both internally and externally to Milly's cheating is in no way mature or balanced, but as a formerly-young man I feel it was very honest.  I imagine everyone can relate to how badly you want to lash out at your own pain when you find yourself in a situation like that.  Woodrow is torn apart and is hurting in a way that people (especially young people) find difficult to endure.  As young people we have a more limited view (or maybe that was just me) that causes us to see every bump in the road as a life altering event, an insurmountable obstacle.  This can lead us to take things very hard, as well as some fairly dramatic acting out or at least ideation.   It's much harder to manage an internal pain than an external pain, something it took me years to learn myself.

Early in the film we're presented with Woodrow's immaturity through his obsession and daily pursuit of building a flamethrower to use when society collapses.  His voice and awkwardness add to this, the voice being a subtle strangeness that writer, actor, and director Evan Glodell adopted for the film.  Woodrow often sounds as if his voice is cracking, especially in the first half of the film, before his breakdown and subsequent emotional growth.  In the second half of the film, as things get darker and more serious in tone, Woodrow adapts to his new situation (albeit slowly) changing his speech slightly in a way that sounds a bit more traditionally masculine, for lack of a better phrase.

Fire plays an important, if slightly on the nose visual role in the film, flame being a metaphor for passion as well as being a menacing destructive force.  At first Woodrow's passion manifests in his desire to build a flamethrower with his friend Aiden but he neglects the project when he meets Milly, who becomes the sole focus of his passion and ultimately who suppresses it entirely.  Woodrow seems to be a man much like Tom from (500) Days of Summer who believes he'll never truly be happy until he meets "the one."  Aiden tries to keep the creative passion alive, first by finishing the flamethrower after Woodrow and Milly literally run away together and later by trying to hold their friendship together as Woodrow retreats into his increasingly mundane relationship.  After Milly cheats on him we see Woodrow revive his passion as he straps on the flamethrower and marches across town in order to burn Milly's belongings in her front yard.  As he walks down the street the flame from the gun dances around, barely contained within the machine which to me speaks to his frame of mind; he's nearly bursting at the seams with anguish and an anger he can't reconcile.  At this point his passion has become something darker.

Woodrow's post break-up passion is also manifest in his car, which Aiden buys for him after Woodrow is severely injured riding the motorcycle he bought at the behest of Milly.  The car, Medusa, is Woodrow's passion manifest.  Medusa is also a very outward expression of Aiden's love for Woodrow.  I'm not going to get involved with the "everything is gay" debate that erupts anytime two male characters are close, but it is very clear that Aiden loves Woodrow, romantically or otherwise, and works tirelessly to protect and nurture him.  More on this later, though, because right now we're talking about Medusa.  Aiden buys Woodrow a car while he's hospitalized after the accident (this opens up the films biggest plot hole, in that no one seems to have a job).  As Woodrow mends, Aiden busies himself by transforming the yellow '72 Buick Skylark into the oiled black, flame-throwing, tire squealing, muscle car that would raise the pulse of any Mad Max fan (I'm speaking from personal experience here).  The fact that Medusa shoots amazing plumes of flame makes it a one-up to the flamethrower.  Woodrow's passion is rising and he now needs bigger outlets to express it.  Of course, none of this may have been intentional, Even Glodell may have just thought fire was cool and I'm just wanking here.

The relationship between Aiden and Woodrow is really cute.  Aiden is the best friend a person could create, despite his initial presentation as the 'crazy asshole' buddy he is an impossibly caring and forgiving guy.  To list all of the thoughtful and selfless things Aiden does for Woodrow would take it's own paragraph and since you're supposed to actually watch this film, I'll leave it up to you.  The most telling though, besides buying and customizing the coolest car either character had ever seen only to give the keys to Woodrow without a thought, was perhaps Aiden's reaction when he finds out that Woodrow has been sleeping with the girl Aiden was interested in for most of the first half.  As it dawns on Aiden that Woodrow and Courtney have been sleeping together, Aiden congratulates his friend with false enthusiasm then kind of quietly says "You know I had a crush on her, right?"  After that, Aiden doesn't bring it up again, it is forgiven and forgotten.  Aiden's many, many good qualities make him feel a bit contrived, but he also acts as Woodrow's ground.

The film's bugfuck crazy second half is really what this is all about though.  The first half, while being beautiful in every way is still just a fairly typical boy meets girl story, albeit with a hint of the crazy that is about to come.  We jump ahead, Milly now has longer hair and Woodrow has some funny facial hair, Aiden has been abandoned by Woodrow, leaving him in a bad state of mind and Woodrow and Milly's relationship is stale.  Everything sucks.  Woodrow's motorcycle accident happens just after he catches Milly cheating, leaving him with a possible brain injury.  This injury plays a huge role in how the ending is interpreted, as Even Glodell refuses to state his intention for it.

After returning from the hospital Woodrow finds himself alone with a box of Milly's belongings.  He stares at the box and this is where we have to decide what's real and what's in his head.  Regardless, this is the  pivotal point, the moment where he either does something he regrets and that causes everything to come crashing down or he fantasizes about it, playing it out to a very grim end.  I believe he plays it out in his head and that once he reaches the end, the moment after he has done something extremely terrible to Milly and is crying in the street covered in her blood, he finds peace or at least acceptance.  He's kneeling in the street crying and Milly walks up, partially recovered from whatever it is he has done to her, and they share a blood soaked hug.  This is the moment when he comes to peace with what's happened to his relationship, but others would argue that this is the moment when he wishes he'd taken a different path earlier on.  I don't buy that though, as too much of the story feels off between the box burning and the hug.  I think Woodrow is hurting very badly and he's terrified that he has some form of brain damage so he is sitting there dreaming of this violent revenge.  As he fantasizes about this revenge his subconscious fills in the blanks with all the ways it could go wrong; Aiden kills Mike but then Aiden has to flee which leaves Woodrow alone, Courtney is willing to run off with Woodrow but then she kills herself when he rejects her.  Woodrow snaps back to reality and dismisses the idea of strapping on the flamethrower and walking across town, instead he takes the box to the beach and burns it quietly and without drama.  He needs that calm quiet finality, because he has matured in his thinking and he knows that acting out with these dangerous toys he's made will only make life worse.  He accepts his situation and he and Aiden leave California together.

Woodrow and Aiden leave California behind, which they initially moved to because "it would be a cool place to be when the end came."  When they leave, they are accepting the need to grow up, to leave some of their apocalyptic fantasies behind and refocus themselves on a new life.  As Aiden says, it's ok that it hurts.

There is so much on display in this film that I could write about it for days (and have, this post has taken a week, off and on to prepare to this point).  I don't know how much of it was intentional and how much of it was a coincidental spilling over of Even Glodell's psyche as he wrote the film, but either way it is a beautiful, stirring, and poignant story.  This film touched me in a very personal way, in the end it doesn't matter if it's a happy accident or not, either way the end result is a fantastic film, one I've enjoyed a little bit more each time I've watched it.  If, for some reason, you've read this but not yet seen the film, I'd encourage you to.  If you take from it even a fraction of what I did, I think you'll enjoy it.

I Swear I Wasn't Crying

I got my NetFlix account in February of 2009 and like a kid in a candy store I proceeded to fill my queue with the films I'd been sorry to have missed in the past few years.  Not all of them were knock-outs, but I remember those first few weeks very fondly as I was extremely excited to see each and every film that arrived.  Until the tenth film, The Namesake, arrived even my less than stellar entries were good.

My first Netflix film was Everything Is Illuminated and it started a trend that I wasn't anticipating, namely that I began to seek out films I thought might be tear jerkers.  I was a bit down, possibly depressed, due to the fact that I had just moved into a new living situation after my second divorce.  A friend that I cherished had died in a most tragic way exactly one year prior and at this juncture I was completely unable to cry and boy howdy did I need too.  So after watching Everything Is Illuminated and feeling that near miss of weeping it gifted me I set out, more or less consciously, to get films that might, maybe, make me cry.

Not everything I rented was designed to bring tears, mind you, it was just something in the back of my head. I powered through The Fountain for the first time and while I loved it and it has become one of my favorite films, it didn't bring about the weeping.  Once was another one that was a fantastic film but didn't even get me close.  Clearly love lost wasn't the ticket for me.

A couple of months into my NetFlix kick I saw The Fall and that, for me, was a game changer.  Tarsem was a director I knew only from The Cell, which I had enjoyed for it's visuals but found the story to be fairly uninspiring.  With The Fall I felt like Tarsem had found a story that paired perfectly with his strong visual sense and created something astoundingly beautiful and moving.  It didn't work either and to skip ahead in the story, no film succeeded in making me cry. Several films, like The Fall, caused a few tears to drip drip drip down my cheeks but I wanted a full on boohoo that I never achieved from watching movies, regardless of their quality.

The point of this, though is that I find that emotional response is key to my enjoyment of a film.  Some people really just want to watch shit getting blown up and maybe some badass kung-fu, but at the end of the day that amounts to little more than flashing lights to me.  I'm not saying that all films with badass kung-fu and shit being blown up are devoid of emotion, far from it, but when you boil down a movie to the bare spectacle and forget the rest of it, I find my interest fading.  For an example of this I'd ask you to watch the trailer for Battle: Los Angeles and then go watch the movie.  The trailer hints at maybe a human story, some sadness and maybe a little bit of depth; I had fairly high hopes for it.  What we got was, instead a bland two hour gun fight that did little, if anything, to stir the soul.

I'm not going to start talking about how we need this sort of input because of our miserable modern lives or any of that stupid shit, I'll leave that for people slightly more pompous than myself.  I will say, though that emotional connection is key to enjoying art.  It doesn't mean that it has to be designed to move you to tears, that just happens to be what I enjoy, but any emotional response other than general hatred of the wasted time taken by the garbage you just watched is fairly important.

Anyway, this is an important criteria for me and the absence of that emotional connection is largest reason why I'll react negatively to a film.  The inclusion of emotion will also turn me on to a film that might otherwise be poorly received.  Sunshine was a good example of this, seeing as how it lost it's way there toward the end with the space slasher stuff that showed up out of no where, but the final shots of the movie, Capa meeting the Sun and touching the face of creation/destruction/God/whatever and standing there as time goes wonky and "everything becomes unquantifiable" is so moving and awe inspiring that it brings it all back around to the promises made at the beginning of the film.  It's one of the most moving endings I've seen in recent years and largely why it rocketed up to a small obsession for a while.

Anyway, I could talk forever about each and every moment that meant something to me in each and every film that's ever touched me, the point though is that they did.  For me it's rarely, if ever, about the spectacle and a few guilty pleasures aside, it's almost always about that feeling I get from the events, relationships, and struggles of the humans portrayed within.

Stephen Blackehart Is Boring(?)

So I was just reading a shit-storm of comments about an email exchange that director James Gunn had with some dull lady in a studio office regarding the title of a song he worked on called "That Gay Fucking Cat."  Anyway, homosexual felines are beside the point (and to be fair, all cats are gay), in this shit-storm of comments someone or another accused James of stealing an idea he had for a Humanzee from the wrong source.  This lead to James explaining he'd been fascinated by the idea of the human since hearing about it from his friend, actor Stephen Blackehart.

This is where the story gets interesting, (that's right people flame-baiting director James Gunn, gay cats, and humanzees aren't where the interesting starts) because it turns out that Stephen Blackehart is boring.  I'm not sure why that strikes me as funny, but I suppose it's because I've seen Stephen in exactly one movie, Tromeo and Juliet, and since he's such a handsome fellow I just assumed that he'd be a really interesting and engaging guy.   Who knows, maybe he is and James is just fucking with him in that blog post.*  Either way, it's not something you'd expect to hear considering Stephen might be the son of Marlon Brando...or not, this is a little fuzzy.

So yeah, that's a funny story that I wanted to share, about an actor that I doubt any of my audience (all three of you, hi mom!) will have heard of.  Anyway, it's kind of a weird way to kick off the blog, but it's what was on my mind this morning, so I guess that's that.  Cheers.


*James Gunn has stated in an interview that Michael Rooker likes to eat poop, so the precedent is there.